This application relates to an active noise control system for aircraft, and a method for enhancing pilot situational awareness. The term “active noise control” refers broadly herein to any active, adaptive, or semi-active means for controlling, cancelling, damping, or suppressing any noise, sound, vibration, structural-acoustic, or vibro-acoustic. The invention utilizes the pilot's auditory sense to enhance situational awareness. In the present context, situational awareness is the degree of accuracy by which a pilot's perception of his or her current environment mirrors reality. At all times during a flight, the pilot should know where he has been, where he is, where he is going, and what he should be doing.
A number of tools are available to assist in developing and maintaining situational awareness. Checklists, for example, provide excellent outlines intended to guide pilots through problems in a methodical way, and ultimately, ease the strain on situational awareness. In today's panoramic glass cockpits, other more technological tools include multi-color moving map displays. Such visual displays can play a big role in enhancing situational awareness by lessening certain cognitive tasks—e.g., keeping track of where you are and where you are going. However, because the brain can only handle a certain amount of work at any particular moment, the abundance of checklists, maps, gauges, and other visual tools often cause task overload. When the brain's processing limits are exceeded, things get overlooked and, regrettably, situational awareness begins to rapidly decompose.
One key object of the present invention is to reduce reliance on existing visual tools by better utilizing the pilot's sense of hearing for enhanced situational awareness. By employing strategically located noise controllers on the aircraft, the existence of other nearby aircraft can be readily communicated to the pilot with no additional cockpit visual work load. The invention promotes collision avoidance by making the pilot clearly aware of the presence and relative position of other nearby aircraft in real time while looking out the windscreen of the cockpit. Nearby aircraft to the right and left, above, behind, and below are readily detected even though they may not be directly visible to the pilot.